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Montréal: Canada’s innovation epicenter Posted on November 21st, 2007 by Mitch Brisebois Where do Canada’s innovators live? Mostly Montréal. Followed by Ottawa. A quick database search of The US Patent and Trademark Office reveals that 4,931 granted patents are held by inventors living in Montreal. Ottawa-based inventors offer up 3,402 patents. Here’s a coast to coast breakdown of the top 10 major centers: Montréal - 4,931 Ottawa - 3,402 Toronto - 3,187 Vancouver - 2,407 Calgary - 1,598 Edmonton - 1,293 Quebec City - 702 Winnipeg - 696 Saskatoon - 470 St. John’s - 117 These are respectable enough numbers. But… consider New York City: 22,571 patents.

YANKEEDOM. Founded on the shores of Massachusetts Bay by radical Calvinists as a new Zion, Yankeedom has, since the outset, put great emphasis on perfecting earthly civilization through social engineering, denial of self for the common good, and assimilation of outsiders. It has prized education, intellectual achievement, communal empowerment, and broad citizen participation in politics and government, the latter seen as the public’s shield against the machinations of grasping aristocrats and other would-be tyrants. Since the early Puritans, it has been more comfortable with government regulation and public-sector social projects than many of the other nations, who regard the Yankee utopian streak with trepidation. NEW NETHERLAND. Established by the Dutch at a time when the Netherlands was the most sophisticated society in the Western world, New Netherland has always been a global commercial culture—materialistic, with a profound tolerance for ethnic and religious diversity and an unflinching commitment to the freedom of inquiry and conscience. Like seventeenth-century Amsterdam, it emerged as a center of publishing, trade, and finance, a magnet for immigrants, and a refuge for those persecuted by other regional cultures, from Sephardim in the seventeenth century to gays, feminists, and bohemians in the early twentieth. Unconcerned with great moral questions, it nonetheless has found itself in alliance with Yankeedom to defend public institutions and reject evangelical prescriptions for individual behavior. THE MIDLANDS. America’s great swing region was founded by English Quakers, who believed in humans’ inherent goodness and welcomed people of many nations and creeds to their utopian colonies like Pennsylvania on the shores of Delaware Bay. Pluralistic and organized around the middle class, the Midlands spawned the culture of Middle America and the Heartland, where ethnic and ideological purity have never been a priority, government has been seen as an unwelcome intrusion, and political opinion has been moderate. An ethnic mosaic from the start—it had a German, rather than British, majority at the time of the Revolution—it shares the Yankee belief that society should be organized to benefit ordinary people, though it rejects top-down government intervention. TIDEWATER. Built by the younger sons of southern English gentry in the Chesapeake country and neighboring sections of Delaware and North Carolina, Tidewater was meant to reproduce the semifeudal society of the countryside they’d left behind. Standing in for the peasantry were indentured servants and, later, slaves. Tidewater places a high value on respect for authority and tradition, and very little on equality or public participation in politics. It was the most powerful of the American nations in the eighteenth century, but today it is in decline, partly because it was cut off from westward expansion by its boisterous Appalachian neighbors and, more recently, because it has been eaten away by the expanding federal halos around D.C. and Norfolk. GREATER APPALACHIA. Founded in the early eighteenth century by wave upon wave of settlers from the war-ravaged borderlands of Northern Ireland, northern England, and the Scottish lowlands, Appalachia has been lampooned by writers and screenwriters as the home of hillbillies and rednecks. It transplanted a culture formed in a state of near constant danger and upheaval, characterized by a warrior ethic and a commitment to personal sovereignty and individual liberty. Intensely suspicious of lowland aristocrats and Yankee social engineers alike, Greater Appalachia has shifted alliances depending on who appeared to be the greatest threat to their freedom. It was with the Union in the Civil War. Since Reconstruction, and especially since the upheavals of the 1960s, it has joined with Deep South to counter federal overrides of local preference. DEEP SOUTH. Established by English slave lords from Barbados, Deep South was meant as a West Indies–style slave society. This nation offered a version of classical Republicanism modeled on the slave states of the ancient world, where democracy was the privilege of the few and enslavement the natural lot of the many. Its caste systems smashed by outside intervention, it continues to fight against expanded federal powers, taxes on capital and the wealthy, and environmental, labor, and consumer regulations. EL NORTE. The oldest of the American nations, El Norte consists of the borderlands of the Spanish American empire, which were so far from the seats of power in Mexico City and Madrid that they evolved their own characteristics. Most Americans are aware of El Norte as a place apart, where Hispanic language, culture, and societal norms dominate. But few realize that among Mexicans, norteños have a reputation for being exceptionally independent, self-sufficient, adaptable, and focused on work. Long a hotbed of democratic reform and revolutionary settlement, the region encompasses parts of Mexico that have tried to secede in order to form independent buffer states between their mother country and the United States. THE LEFT COAST. A Chile-shaped nation wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the Cascade and Coast mountains, the Left Coast was originally colonized by two groups: New Englanders (merchants, missionaries, and woodsmen who arrived by sea and dominated the towns) and Appalachian midwesterners (farmers, prospectors, and fur traders who generally arrived by wagon and controlled the countryside). Yankee missionaries tried to make it a “New England on the Pacific,” but were only partially successful. Left Coast culture is a hybrid of Yankee utopianism and Appalachian self-expression and exploration—traits recognizable in its cultural production, from the Summer of Love to the iPad. The staunchest ally of Yankeedom, it clashes with Far Western sections in the interior of its home states. THE FAR WEST. The other “second-generation” nation, the Far West occupies the one part of the continent shaped more by environmental factors than ethnographic ones. High, dry, and remote, the Far West stopped migrating easterners in their tracks, and most of it could be made habitable only with the deployment of vast industrial resources: railroads, heavy mining equipment, ore smelters, dams, and irrigation systems. As a result, settlement was largely directed by corporations headquartered in distant New York, Boston, Chicago, or San Francisco, or by the federal government, which controlled much of the land. The Far West’s people are often resentful of their dependent status, feeling that they have been exploited as an internal colony for the benefit of the seaboard nations. Their senators led the fight against trusts in the mid-twentieth century. Of late, Far Westerners have focused their anger on the federal government, rather than their corporate masters. NEW FRANCE. Occupying the New Orleans area and southeastern Canada, New France blends the folkways of ancien régime northern French peasantry with the traditions and values of the aboriginal people they encountered in northwestern North America. After a long history of imperial oppression, its people have emerged as down-to-earth, egalitarian, and consensus driven, among the most liberal on the continent, with unusually tolerant attitudes toward gays and people of all races and a ready acceptance of government involvement in the economy. The New French influence is manifest in Canada, where multiculturalism and negotiated consensus are treasured. FIRST NATION. First Nation is populated by native American groups that generally never gave up their land by treaty and have largely retained cultural practices and knowledge that allow them to survive in this hostile region on their own terms. The nation is now reclaiming its sovereignty, having won considerable autonomy in Alaska and Nunavut and a self-governing nation state in Greenland that stands on the threshold of full independence. Its territory is huge—far larger than the continental United States—but its population is less than 300,000, most of whom live in Canada. http://www.tufts.edu/alumni/magazine/fall2013/features/up-in-arms.html

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/13/world/europe/eye-on-georgia-lazika/index.html

(Courtesy of The Montreal Gazette)

Avoir ou ne pas avoir le Musée du portrait Frédérique Doyon Édition du mardi 12 février 2008 Mots clés : Patrimoine, Musée du portrait du Canada, Art, Culture, Québec (province) La proposition montréalaise tarde à prendre forme Y aura-t-il une proposition montréalaise pour le futur Musée du portrait du Canada (MPC)? La question se pose encore à deux mois de la nouvelle échéance du concours lancé conjointement par les ministères du Patrimoine canadien et des Travaux publics en novembre dernier. La Ville de Montréal dit que «les discussions se poursuivent entre les différents partenaires», selon l'attachée du maire Tremblay, Renée Sauriol. Partenaires plus hypothétiques que réels si l'on se fie au petit tour d'horizon mené par Le Devoir. L'échéance, d'abord fixée à demain pour le dépôt des propositions, vient d'être reportée à la mi-avril. Destiné à accueillir l'imposante collection de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada (BAC) -- des milliers de caricatures, 10 000 estampes, plus de 2000 dessins et quatre millions de photographies --, le MPC devait s'installer dans l'ancienne ambassade américaine en face du Parlement à Ottawa. Les libéraux avaient injecté 11 millions dans les rénovations. Prévoyant les dépassements de coûts, le gouvernement conservateur a plutôt invité neuf villes d'accueil -- Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Montréal, Québec, Halifax -- à soumettre une candidature, dans un souci de représentativité coast to coast. Partenaire institutionnel le plus avisé pour un tel projet à Montréal, le Musée McCord «n'a pas de proposition formelle ni informelle» sur la table, indique sa directrice Victoria Dickenson, mais reste prêt à partager son expertise. «Ça nous intéresse à cause de nos collections», poursuit-elle, faisant valoir les 250 000 portraits photographiques des archives Notman et quelque 4000 tableaux «dont une bonne partie sont des portraits». «Mais la proposition, c'est de bâtir un édifice en PPP pour accueillir tous les services d'un musée. Ce que le gouvernement cherche, c'est un promoteur», résume la directrice qui voit mal l'intérêt du McCord à s'engager. Le Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal n'a pas répondu non plus à l'appel d'Ottawa. Le Musée d'histoire et d'archéologie Pointe-à-Callière qui voyait une synergie possible avec BAC dans le contexte d'un quartier de l'histoire en devenir, s'est finalement ravisé. «On garde un oeil ouvert advenant qu'un promoteur trouve un intérêt et un local dans le secteur», explique la directrice générale Francine Lelièvre, qui lorgnait l'édifice des Douanes, place d'Youville, dont le sous-sol est riche pour l'archéologie. Promoteurs recherchés Deux promoteurs montréalais ont notamment montré un intérêt, Pomerleau et Phil O'Brien de Viger DMC International. Ce dernier a seulement «participé à des discussions très générales et préliminaires à ce sujet», selon sa porte-parole Isabelle Thelen. Chez Pomerleau, on réfléchit toujours... «Nous n'avons pas pris de décision pour savoir si on répondra à l'appel de propositions», indique Marie-Claude Dubeau. L'appel de propositions, issu du ministère des Travaux publics et Services gouvernementaux Canada pour le compte de BAC, s'adresse de fait aux promoteurs, invités à construire un nouvel édifice ou rénover un bâtiment existant «sur un terrain appartenant au promoteur ou contrôlé par celui-ci», qui doit par ailleurs «mobiliser des ressources du secteur privé et l'appui de la communauté» et «fournir un soutien financier continu au MPC», selon le document du ministère. Le projet sera divisé en cinq sections principales, les services aux visiteurs, les expositions, l'éducation et les programmes publics, la gestion des collections ainsi que l'administration et l'exploitation. Le gouvernement achètera ces installations ou les louera à long terme. La démarche a défrayé la chronique dans la capitale nationale détrônée. On l'a qualifiée de «processus tordu» reflétant «une idéologie politique allant à l'encontre du bon sens». Par son histoire et les collections stratégiques du Musée McCord, Montréal est toute désignée pour accueillir une telle institution. Or plusieurs donnent l'avance à Calgary, économiquement riche mais muséalement plus pauvre. http://www.ledevoir.com/2008/02/12/175781.html